Pork and beef carcasses are typically butchered into several cuts or portions, which may be used to prepare spare ribs and back ribs. Spare ribs may be further divided into the traditional breast bone spare ribs or St. Louis style spare ribs. St. Louis style spare ribs generally comprise the upper part of a rib separated from the breast bone or brisket bone. St. Louis style spare ribs are generally very meaty and include minimal fat.
Back rib cuts are generally prepared by cutting the loin sections between the back ribs and the semispinalis muscle adjacent to the hack ribs to form a loin cut and a back rib cut. The back rib meat cut, also known as a baby back rib cut, includes rib bones and related intercostal meat. Each back rib cut is intact and includes portions of at least eight ribs. See Institutional Meat Purchaser Specification Item No. 422 (June, 1997). Back rib cuts are generally sold as a single intact rib section, which may be prepared and consumed with various sauces. The demand for the baby back rib cuts has increased dramatically in recent years due to the increase in the number of barbeque-themed restaurants. However, because back rib cuts typically contain only intercostal meat between the rib bones, conventional back rib cuts do not include a substantial amount of meat.
In recent years, corporations owning barbeque-themed restaurants have become increasingly interested in barbeque style food products that can retain the interest of repeat business. Consuming barbeque style ribs in a social situation, however, has always been a delicate undertaking. Traditionally, barbeque style ribs have carried the distinction of being an untidy food item, and as a result, are left off of may fine dining menus. Enjoying barbeque style ribs is often difficult, as eating them can be time consuming, embarrassing, and messy. As is often the custom, barbeque ribs are eaten without utensils, utilizing one's own hands to assist in separating the meat from the rib bones and introducing the meat into one's mouth.
As a result of this direct contact of the meat with the hands, the thick consistency of barbeque sauce has the potential to coat one's hands and is difficult to remove without the assistance of a moist towelettes or inserting by one's own fingers into their mouth to assist in removing the excess barbeque sauce.
Embarrassment can also occur due to the shape of the rib bones themselves. A single barbeque style rib possesses the shape of an elongated cylinder, encased in meat and covered with barbeque sauce. When taken to one's mouth to eat, if not eaten with care, the rib can displace sauce onto the consumer's face, which can cause great embarrassment.
There are also health risks associated with the consumption of ribs. Because of the irregular shapes and hardness of the rib bones, the risk of injury to the inside of one's mouth is also a concern. Furthermore, the potential for choking on a portion of a rib hone causes people to avoid consuming ribs.
Additionally, a meat cut that includes both rib bones and associated meat makes it more difficult for a person to consume all available meat, because the person must work around and between the bones. Therefore, consuming barbeque style ribs has the tendency to be tedious and laborious, due to the requirement of tearing the meat from the bones and eating meat from around the rib bones themselves.
There have been attempts to produce boneless pork and beef back rib products. One such method of producing boneless rib meat includes first separating the rib meat from the bones, creating a paste-like meat intermediate product, and restructuring the paste-like intermediate product into a form that attempts to resemble the appearance of a natural slab of ribs. These types of processed or restructured rib products are commonly offered by fast food restaurant chains and in the frozen foods sections of retail grocery stores. Obviously, these boneless pork or beef products that lack the natural appearance and consistency of an unprocessed slab of rib meat.
Heretofore, there has been no process for providing a ready-to-eat de-boned rib product that does not involve processing the native rib meat into piece or parts, and reforming or restructuring meat pieces into a slab-shaped product. Accordingly, there is still a need in the art for a barbeque style rib meat product that can be readily consumed and that overcomes the disadvantages associated with consuming traditional barbeque ribs having bones embedded therein. Such a de-boned rib meat product would avoid the stigma traditionally attached to dining on barbeque style ribs and is therefore more likely to result in repeat business for barbeque-themed restaurants, retail grocery outlets, and the like.